Political secret is history

Essie Mae Washington-Williams was never publicly acknowledged by her father, although he lived for a century.

Comment

recordnet.com

Writer

Posted Feb. 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM

Posted Feb. 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM

» Social News

Essie Mae Washington-Williams was never publicly acknowledged by her father, although he lived for a century.

It just wasn't done. And Washington-Williams kept her own counsel until after her father died.

Her father was the one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. He died 10 years ago at 100; she died this week at 87.

She was the daughter of Thurmond and his family's black maid.

The man, who served in the Senate 47 years and is perhaps best remembered for his longest ever 24 hours and 18 minutes filibuster against the Civil Rights Bill of 1947, never could bring himself to publicly acknowledge his own flesh and blood. The identity of Washington-Williams' father was rumored for decades in political circles and in the black community.

She kept quiet, she said later, to avoid damaging his political career.

Such assassinations are not unknown, certainly not in American politics. It is accepted that the man who penned the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, had a decades-long relationship with his slave, Sally Hemmings. A number of children resulted.

And like Thurmond, Jefferson never acknowledged his relationship or the children that resulted (although all were freed, including some before he died, something given no other nuclear slave family at Monticello).

"... At last I am completely free," Washington-Williams said at a news conference after Thurmond died. She'd waited 77 years for her freedom.